Tag: private schools

Texas private school slammed for ‘covering up’ piano teacher’s abuse as 16 girls, as young as 6, come forward

The heartbroken families of several girls who were allegedly abused by a pedophile piano teacher are suing a Texas private school for a ‘cover-up’.  

Trent Muse, a former teacher at Trinity Valley High School in Fort Worth, is accused of sexually abusing 16 students ranging in age from six to 11 years old.

A lawsuit launched by the families on March 25 blasts Muse as a ‘serial pedophile who was left unmonitored, unsupervised, and alone behind a closed door with vulnerable children’ in the 2022-2023 academic year. 

Trinity Valley, which charges just under $30,000 per year, is accused of ‘intentional concealment and ongoing cover-up of this widespread sexual abuse’ which ’caused injury to at least 16 children and likely more’. 

Parents say Muse ‘masturbated in front of the students, touched their legs, chest, and genital areas, forced them to touch his penis, put his penis on them, and exposed his penis repeatedly to countless elementary-aged girls’ during ‘piano lessons’. 

‘Muse even created sadistic ‘games’ for students in which he would reward students with ‘prizes’ after he coerced them into touching him and vice versa,’ the lawsuit reads. 

‘In at least one instance, a child fought Muse, drawing blood, but that did not stop him. He continued to subject his young victims to abuse undeterred.’

The lawsuit claims that Trinity school staff ‘knew something was awry’ because one employee ‘witnessed a child crying while Muse physically forced her into piano lessons’.   

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In an Unprecedented Move, Ohio Is Funding the Construction of Private Religious Schools

The state of Ohio is giving taxpayer money to private, religious schools to help them build new buildings and expand their campuses, which is nearly unprecedented in modern U.S. history.

While many states have recently enacted sweeping school voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to spend on private school tuition for their kids, Ohio has cut out the middleman. Under a bill passed by its Legislature this summer, the state is now providing millions of dollars in grants directly to religious schools, most of them Catholic, to renovate buildings, build classrooms, improve playgrounds and more.

The goal in providing the grants, according to the measure’s chief architect, Matt Huffman, is to increase the capacity of private schools in part so that they can sooner absorb more voucher students.

“The capacity issue is the next big issue on the horizon” for voucher efforts, Huffman, the Ohio Senate president and a Republican, told the Columbus Dispatch.

Huffman did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

Following Hurricane Katrina and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, some federal taxpayer dollars went toward repairing and improving private K-12 schools in multiple states. Churches that operate schools often receive government funding for the social services that they offer; some orthodox Jewish schools in New York have relied on significant financial support from the city, The New York Times has found.

But national experts on education funding emphasized that what Ohio is doing is categorically different.

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Push to force religious schools to hire gay teachers in South Australia

A South Australian legislator is set to introduce a bill that would mandate religious schools to employ homosexual teachers.

Robert Simms, an openly gay Greens member of the upper house of South Australia’s Parliament, announced his intention to propose this bill in August, aiming to abolish exemptions for religious institutions.

“It is outrageous that in 21st-century South Australia, a gay teacher working in a religious school can be in fear of losing their job simply because of their sexuality… Surely all South Australians deserve equal protection before the law?” Simms told The Advertiser.

Simms also expressed his frustration with the Federal Government’s “slow progress” on the issue, urging the South Australian government to take the initiative.

Conversely, Warwick D’Silva, national president of the Australian Family Association (AFA), criticised the proposal.

“Robert Simms’s plan to remove current exemptions for faith-based schools from South Australia’s anti-discrimination law smacks of hypocrisy,” D’Silva stated. He questioned if Simms would support legislation limiting his own party’s employment freedoms similarly.

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Not just public schools: Ohio PRIVATE school reports mothers to FBI for questioning leftist curriculum

Amy Gonzalez and Andrea Gross are suing Columbus Academy in Ohio for launching a retaliation campaign against them following complaints they made about the private school’s leftist curriculum.

According to reports, Columbus Academy reported Gonzalez and Gross to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), calling them “dangerous to the health and wellbeing of the entire Academy community. Administrators also allegedly attempted to destroy the two mothers’ reputation out of spite.

Filed on June 12, the lawsuit claims Columbus Academy overreacted to questions the two women had about critical race theory (CRT) concepts being embedded into their children’s curriculum, which they believe is “indoctrination.”

“And so, when I say an overreaction, I mean an overreaction of calling the police on us, alerting almost 900 faculty members that they had alerted the FBI that we were dangerous,” Gross told Fox News Digital.

“Just things that were so far beyond the pale that it would lead one to ask why? Why is the reaction so extreme?”

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